The Perfect Space
by ArentYouSophiaLoren-8887
Summary: Sometimes, it's just the two of them. It's not the same as before, after everything that's happened, but he doesn't really mind the changes. Because they're safe now. ONESHOT.


**Author's Note: Every now and then, such as a time when the red sun rises, roses bloom in the dead of winter, and unicorns walk the earth, I write sexy moments. I can account for sex in this story, but not for anything else I just mentioned. Especially the unicorns. Sorry. **

**If you squint really hard and tilt your head exactly 37 degrees to the right, you MIGHT be able to see this as a sequel to my fic "Limits". You don't necessarily need to read that fic to understand this one, but hey, why not give it a try? It contains sex, too…you know, if you're into that sort of thing. Bendy couch sex, even (as opposed to bendy but "boring" bed sex in this one). Plus, out of all of my fics, it's the only one I'm consistently proud of. Which is saying something, since my opinion on my own work tends to go from "meh, it's all right" to "oh god what is this horrible shit", oftentimes during the same reading. Yes, I'm pimping out my work to you. Tacky, but it appears that I have succumbed to the perils of tacky behavior.**

**Title is from a song by The Avett Brothers: "I wanna fit in to the perfect space, feel natural and safe in a volatile place".**

**Also thanks to musiksnob for always being a good person to go to for writing help.**

**Twitter: AlbatrossTam14 (protected tweets)**

**I don't own Degrassi.**

It's close to eighty degrees outside, white prisms made of dust and light edging into the dim bedroom. The window is open halfway, letting in a nice breeze that ruffles his bed sheets and smells like honeysuckle and cool water, like something remote and comfortable. He can hear cicadas outside and the distant hum of cars on a nearby street; it sounds like the run of a river, or a waterfall. The gentleness of it makes him feel like he's not entirely awake; like he's still floating in a dream, warm and safe and perfect.

He has no idea if it's morning or afternoon, Saturday or Sunday, and it feels great not to worry or care. For now, Drew has an empty house, parents on vacation till Monday night, a fridge with leftover lasagna, some sunlit summer downtime from the aftermath of gangs and guns and nightmares, and a black-haired girl in his bed.

Bianca is doing her best impersonation of a cat, the way she's stretched out in the beam of sunlight spotlighting her side of the mattress. She's almost purring from contentment, long and lean and loose. Relaxed like Drew hasn't seen her in months, since their biggest worry was sneaking him in after curfew and not how they were going to arrange a plea bargain that would protect her from juvie or worse.

But now, she's still and sleeping, unaware and uncaring.

Drew reaches one hand over and puts it on her shoulder. Her skin is warm and practically humming. She shifts, creaking the mattress, and rolls over to face him, eyes still closed and making small, satisfied murmurs as she takes up the remainder of the space on his pillow.

Adam was picked up earlier today by Eli. His brother is being anywhere but home right now, both to give Drew his privacy and preserve his own sanity. He yelled from somewhere in the house earlier– gone for a few hours, be back around five, try not to burn down the house, Idiot, and remember to answer the phone in case it's Mom checking in – exaggerating his attempts to give Drew's bedroom a wide berth.

Poor Adam. With Bianca in the house, it sort of blocks him from everything near Drew's bedroom – the Xbox, the PlayStation, their TV with all his shows cataloged on the DVR, even his own bedroom that shares a wall with Drew's. It makes Drew want to laugh. He promised Adam that Bianca would be gone by Sunday afternoon, so his brother can stop sleeping in the guest bedroom upstairs normally reserved for Grams, and stop finding Bianca in their bathroom, using Drew's toothbrush in her underwear – though Drew figures Adam may not have minded that one so much.

He owes his brother a Call of Duty marathon after this weekend, and a side order of garlic bread sticks with the pizza he was planning on ordering for dinner tonight. And probably a ride somewhere. Adam likes to eke out every little bit he can when they're trying to even the score.

Bianca shifts beside him again, her hand resting casually on his stomach and her eyes barely opening.

He grins. "Good morning."

Bianca opens her eyes just enough to roll them.

"What's so good about it?" she mumbles, closing her eyes and pressing a palm across her forehead.

He props himself up on one elbow and leans over her shoulder.

"I dunno," he says casually. He pushes her curls away from her face, ignoring her playful swat, and kisses her shoulder. "I'm naked, you're naked…" he kisses his way up to her neck, feeling a smile tug across her face, "we're in bed together…" he finds the spot behind her ear he knows makes her crazy.

"We had an amazing night," he finishes, finally making his way to her lips. "Am I missing something?"

"It's morning and I'm awake," Bianca says, a smirk in her eyes. "And you're expecting me to listen. That's not good."

She brushes her hair out of her eyes and yawns, arms outstretched and neck creaking as she stretches out.

"Where's the Short Round?" she asks.

"Out with Eli," he replies. He leans forward and raises his eyebrows. "We have the house to ourselves."

Bianca pushes herself up on one elbow, her face somewhere between a grin and a held breath. It's so weird to see the old and new Bianca at the same time. It's like both are having a cat fight for control of her face.

She lets the smile win, but it's still got that trace of something else in it, something that's so Bianca but not at the same time. Like there's more that makes her up now than before. But he figures he looks the same way too, sometimes, because he's the same way.

"Still sleepy," she murmurs, lying back down. She rests her head next to his, tangled wisps of her hair brushing against his lips. "Too early."

He lies back down with her, hand draped across her waist, and presses his face into the curve of her shoulder blade.

It's weird, this softness. Not unwelcome or unwanted. Just strange. He always figured them together would be hard and fast and messy, like all the best wet dreams come true in the back seat of her car or on the couch before his mom came home. Stuff like this was like something out of a crappy movie he had to watch with his mom. He doesn't cuddle, except for these times when he does, and it doesn't make him feel like a girl or feel the need to speed things up and make them more interesting. Even with a naked girl in his bed he just wants to stay put for now. Whatever happens later can happen later. He can wait.

Not long ago, he'd wake up every day thinking the world was burning at the edges. Now, though, with the sun streaming into the room and Bianca breathing into his ear, it doesn't feel that way. It's too quiet and feels too safe to be the end of the world.

Maybe it's not, anymore. They're both safe now, even if his heart still picks up every time he sees a shadow in the corner of his eye, and Bianca's bruises just recently faded into tan. Although Drew can still picture them – a bloated wrist, Vince's fingerprints dug into her neck, and a bruise the shape of a man's boot print kicked into her ribcage. Pain was green on the blue, but right where it hurt the most, right in the middle, it was black.

Everything that's happened is wild and terrifying and too real to be a nightmare, trapped inside two bodies that can't contain it all. The enormity of it all has always been too big for Drew, and Bianca's barely holding it in herself, either. She'd spent months racking up sacrifices for Drew, breaking at the edges and fraying her seams, trying to contain both of their demons for his sake. She's swallowed Hell whole and come out on the other side, torn open and hurting and not the same but still alive.

These days, they're taped and glued together with lawyer jargon and hope, like Elmer's and ABC gum. But parts of themselves – the meanest corners of nightmares and the sharpest, bloodiest memories – can't be hidden. At least, not well. But it's okay, because Bianca's seen those sides of him, like he's seen hers. So they're about as equal now as they'll ever be.

It's funny. Before, when he thought he wasn't afraid of anything (except his mother's wrath over a bad mark, not that he'd ever admit that aloud) and everyone thought she was bad news, he thought the reason being with her was so amazing was because it was this kinda forbidden thing. That the thrill was in the adventure, the freedom, the not caring what anyone else thought. The "danger" appeal.

Now he knows what real danger is. And now, instead of everything being hot and fast and sexy as hell, they're the safest places for each other. Because she saved him, and he knows he's the person who would never hurt her.

It's the kind of responsibility he had before only associated with Adam – being someone else's safe haven, someone's guard. A wall between them and the world; even if it didn't mean you could actually protect them from anything, you were damn well gonna try. And it should freak the hell out of him, the hugeness of that, but it doesn't.

He's had a billion hook-ups that have meant a billion different things. What they would do for him, what he had to do for them to get it, what it meant to both of them. It always had a definition, because that's what worked best for him – it let him know what he was allowed to do and what he would be getting from this, and whether or not it was worth the time.

But he can't figure this out or define it, like he could with any of the other girls he'd known – the ones at his old school, Marisol, Alli, Katie. He has no idea what this means to have her here, her curls spread across his pillow and his face pressed into her shoulder, one arm draped over her waist. He's not smart, never has been. Wouldn't know what to call it even if he was like Adam, a grade above the rest of his year, taking AP English with the seniors because he was such a frigging brain.

Drew just isn't like that. Doesn't know the word for it, or if there even is any at all.

All he knows, and all he's content to know, is that he feels more for her than he can contain or sort out in himself. It's too big for him to understand – what they've done for each other, what they've given, what they've sacrificed. Her more than him, he knows, but he'll still stick by their story of Anson's death until there's no one left to tell the truth. Until maybe, someday, neither he nor Bianca will remember what really happened that cold April night.

So for now, it's just the two of them in this empty house, skin on skin and tangled, sideways and sleepy and safe.

"It feels weird," she murmurs.

He peers down at her through the wild tangle of bed-swept hair. "Yeah?"

She tilts her eyes to his. "This," she says. "It's so weird."

"Why?"

She shrugs, lifting one hand flat against his chest. "I don't know." Her hand inches up until it's against his heart, beating right into her palm. "It just feels weird."

Her breathing is slow and steady, her hair smelling like dust and his house, like she's always been here.

He thinks he might get what she means. Who knows where they'd be if so much shit hadn't gone down. If this, right here, was the result of all that shit, or if it would have happened eventually.

He doesn't know.

He used to think about it all the time – where his life would be if Bianca had never come around – but not so much anymore. Even after Adam got hurt.

Especially after that. Because then, it was like it didn't matter anymore.

And it didn't, really, because the second Drew realized Adam was trapped in the middle of his shit, Drew stopped thinking about the _then _and started thinking about the _now_. Because that was when things had gone too far – too far to turn back, too far to go forward, too far to do anything except stop it all NOW, like his world had totally stopped when he'd heard Adam cry and Drew fell to his knees beside him.

He blinks hard, shoving the memory away to some horrible place in his head where there's a giant rug with a giant pile of dirt under it. Fuck that. He can't think about that. It's bad enough he has to dream about it, over and over and over again in every nightmare he's had since prom. It's worse than reliving the beatdown Vince's thugs gave him, worse than any bad dream of Anson's death he'd ever had.

And maybe, Drew thinks, trying to force himself to think away from something that might smell like blood, wherever he and Bianca might be now had none of this ever happened couldn't be figured, because they weren't the same then. Things like this just figured themselves out around everything that had changed them. They found a way, just like he said they would.

It's what he promised her in the wake of prom. Those backwards days where neither of them knew which way was up and even though Vince was gone, they were still trying to hold themselves together. Still darting at shadows in the corner and walking around with their guts ripped open, the word WOUNDED stamped on their foreheads. Broken and bare and beaten down. Those sunless summer days when Drew woke from nightmares of Adam weeping in blood-soaked pain, and Bianca flinched whenever someone accidentally brushed up against her, expecting another strike to the face or a calloused hand gripping her neck, choking off her defiance.

"I don't want to be anywhere else, though," Drew says, and then feels like such a WUSS. God, it's like he's seriously IN one of those shitty girl movies. He blushes stupidly. This is the most weak and unmanly he's ever been with anyone ever in bed. It should be totally humiliating, a break in his reputation.

Bianca smirks at his corny gracelessness, but it's somehow not demeaning. She cares more about what he can't say than what he does. She looks up at him and he bends his head down to hers, pressing his mouth to her lips in a way he can't believe he'd ever actually kiss a girl, all softness, with an even crazier urge to not want to speed things up.

They'd always wanted to get right down to business, and Drew never minded. But now, things are different. Not that she's into it any less than he still is, but something's slowed down, like they're both more willing to savor it. Now, there are sleepy moments like these with unneeded exploration; unhurried and almost lazy with their quiet, simple touch and taste that is totally contradicted by the intense and glorious sensation that uncoils in Drew's stomach whenever they do this. These moments are when he feels like he's going to be blasted apart by light and heat, by pure energy. And it's also when everything that feels like it fell apart all got put back together again.

Drew figures the slowdown in Bianca has to do with being with Vince, and what everything he did to her. But that's about all the figuring he can do in that department before he wants to hit something, or throw something, or do something macho and loud and violent and probably very stupid. But he doesn't care how stupid it is, because the monster that roars in the pit of his stomach whenever Vince comes to mind only goes quiet when Drew thinks of all the horrible ways he could torture that motherfucker….

"Yo!"

Bee snaps her fingers in front of his face. "You with me?"

He grins, determined to blink Vince out of his mind. Especially now. He's not allowed here. Not allowed HER. Ever again. That was something else he had promised Bianca, after prom.

"Now I am."

Bianca rolls her eyes. "Good," she mutters. "God, you're spacey."

Still the same, he thinks wryly. Just a bit different.

But he's okay with what's changed.

She takes one long, elegant finger and traces his jawline, a movement that she's had since the start that's been shorthand before either of them knew what it was short for. His hand runs down the smooth curve of her back, the answer she wants.

Touching has become so different now, more so than it ever was before. Because touch that can bring the most of everything – the most intense agony and terror of memory, as well as the most powerful quiet and renewal. It's simple enough to make his head spin, and complicated enough to tangle them even more than they already are. It's calming and complicated and claiming – the barest touch of fingers against the sweaty metal of a gun still warm from use; the shake of a shoulder to bring the other out of the nightmares that still haven't gone away, and who knows when they ever will; crawling into each other's skin in the darkness because they need to bury themselves in the only other person who understands the interiors of their private, vacant hells.

Sometimes, touch means more than an itch and less than a sacrifice.

Drew, a master of touch as cheap as talk, is just beginning to learn these things, and Bianca sometimes still needs to remember that touch can mean "together" in place of "anger".

Fingers brush, palms meet, hands clasp. Hands that are still calloused and rough from fighting against hands that now measure every movement; hands that never used to hesitate, but they do now because they've forgotten that hands can heal instead of bruise or simply just take. Hard on soft, calloused against smooth, patched on tattered. They're a study in contrasts.

The little room is quiet, just the sound of them breathing in a haze of dusty white sunlight. The hum outside makes him close his eyes for a moment before he peers down into hers, as she blinks at him languidly.

"Thinking about me?" she smiles.

"Wouldn't you like to know," he shoots back, grinning.

Bianca rolls her eyes. "Wrong answer."

She runs her fingers through his hair, resting her hand on the back of his neck and pulling them back together.

Their mouths never had to fight. That's something else with her. She's always been feisty, and he's always responded with just as much as she gave. They never had to push to get the other to the level they were looking for; they were always already there. Their kisses always had a purpose Drew never got with other girls – not Alli who needed to define and categorize every kiss, or Katie who hesitated and measured each one. Drew meets this latest one from Bianca with his own sense of purpose, something he never really felt kissing another girl before.

Unlike earlier, though, there's urgency moving from her lips to his, a need that's seeded down somewhere and starting to climb its way through the both of them as she grinds her body closer to his. She's all over him now, with those long dancer limbs and that fluid, shadowy grace that's too quick and perfect to be real. That controlled effortless movement that early on had actually worried him; made him wonder, for the first time ever, if he could keep up with a girl. But now it doesn't even register anymore, because it's all part of Bianca, something he understands and doesn't at the same time. And it doesn't even matter to him that that's the kind of weird logic that would normally rip his skull apart, because unlike some bullshit math equation or some stupid English symbol he'll never get, he already knows this, even if he could never explain why or how.

But he isn't thinking about all that right now, because he just _wants_. Not a blowjob or her hand or something else quick and dirty in some place he shouldn't be after curfew. Not a light when he was drowning in darkness, not courage when he was too scared to open his eyes.

Wants _this. _HER.

Bee.

He pulls their lips apart just enough to bend their foreheads together.

"Window's open," Bianca murmurs. Her fingers come up and gently brush the skin under his eyes with the pads of her thumbs.

Drew shrugs his shoulders lazily. "I know."

"Wanna close it?" she asks, smiling.

"Do you?"

"What will the neighbors think?" she jokes.

He kisses her collarbone, then makes his way to her chin. "I'll have what she's having," he murmurs.

Bianca smacks his ass. "You are so full of shit!" she laughs.

Still, neither of them get out of the bed to close it. He wants to leave it open. He wants the world to know she's all his.

She pins him in place for a kiss, and he lets it happen because he always liked it when she did that, just took control. His hands feel down her sides and he grabs her tongue with his, tangling them together, letting out a gravelly moan when she rocks her hips against his.

She pulls back and eases on top of him, bending over him gracefully. Her lips brush against his collarbone up to his neck and to his jaw, and the whole thing makes him shiver. It's like getting a first kiss, all the tingly floating-off-the-ground-oh-my-god sensations, and it's not even on the lips, and he and Bee have kissed a billion times but this feels so different, just the light brush of her lips makes him feel so fucking light and he feels like he can't stop shaking and hopes he's not because he feels like such a GIRL but it feels so good that he almost doesn't care.

Before he can put too much thought into how much he actually does, though, those lips go downward and fuck, if now she isn't doing what she does best, bringing out all her tricks. Hot as all fucking hell and pushing him into overdrive almost before he realizes it and can be embarrassed by it. She finishes him off with noises that he's pretty sure are obscene in languages that haven't been invented yet.

She crawls her way back up him until she reaches his mouth. Her body is one straight line of barely-contained energy, pulled tight and electric, like she's lethal. They wrestle for a while, rolling to the center of the mattress, until she has him. She glides over him, a long map of warm, thrumming skin.

It's helpless, but a good helpless. Instead of cages; pain and screaming and blood and confusion; instead of nightmare and things that go bump in the night.

He craves this. Craves that she makes him feel like can't hide anything, and she still takes him. Just like he is.

She lowers her mouth to his ear and growls into it as she lets her legs fall on either side of him, straddling his waist and rutting their hips together when she sinks down on top of him again. He grabs her curls and moans into her throat. Then their hands fly over his head and he's pinned to the mattress.

"Fuck," he mumbles.

"Shut up," she orders.

Her hands spider up his chest, then she rakes her nails back down across his skin, making him shiver and fuck, it feels so fucking good. His hands go from her hair to her legs, gripping her hips and printing them possessively with his fingers as they dig into the slick skin.

He can't tell which one of them is doing the work at this point, but the room tilts again before he knows it and they're flipped, her body stretched out underneath the shadow of his. She murmurs his name like a prayer that echoes through the hollow cathedral of his skull. Then it dissolves into something that sounds too alive when he slides into her, all heated and desperate and broken-sounding like a promise.

Her throat stretches out and he buries his head in it, letting out something like a whimper into her skin that sounds way too soft for what they're actually doing. He holds his breath for a second as she lets out another moan into his ear that comes THIS close to breaking him.

He doesn't remember nightmares, the burning world, desperation.

He pushes harder into her and she grabs his ass, trying to pull them closer. She swears in his ear something he can't understand and then bucks underneath him, feverish and incoherent, and he loses touch of even himself as they meet in frantic rhythm, all former control out the window and now desperate and needing and too HUMAN to remember who they are, just that they NEED this.

He holds himself up, suddenly incredibly grateful for all the weightlifting sports requires and his own workouts, because his arms are strong enough to keep him from collapsing on top of her, even though he feels like he's going to turn into nothing. He's shaking now, a huge wave of unbearable heat rocketing through him, so close – and when Bianca lets out a deep yell that morphs halfway into a groan, he braces himself and gives it all he's got. With the heat roaring through him at full blast and his insides shaking harder than his outs, he feels like he might explode, but not in a bad way. It's like coming apart and while being put back together at the same time.

Bee's hands grip him tighter but he doesn't really feel it, just the incredible burst of heat and light that feels like it's gonna disintegrate him. His own voice is as harsh as sand, stripped and dry as he lets go and lets the heat rocketing through his gut and up to his ravaged throat scorch her name into the dusty air.

Skin still buzzing, he lets himself down as easily as he can, lying on his side so he doesn't crush her. His arms are still shaking and his head feels light. They're dirty and wet and it's definitely time for a shower, but neither of them are moving, still trying to get their heads back. Her whole body is loose, like she's sinking straight through the mattress, and she runs her fingers through the sweaty strands of hair curled on her temples.

He reaches over to his nightstand and grabs a cup of water – he's not entirely sure how long it's been sitting there, but it's water and room temp and it's not like it ever goes bad – and turns to offer her a sip when sees a look on her face that freezes him. It's nothing he can place, not anything like the old or new Bianca. She's just looking at him, no smile or frown. No real expression, but those brown eyes are just staring at him, and for a moment he doesn't recognize the dark glow in them, this odd oldness in her gaze. It's like looking at a night sky.

Given the amount of time in his life he's spent at least half-dressed and doing something dirty, he shouldn't feel so completely bare from just one look. But with her staring at him like that, it's as if there's a whole new definition of "naked" that has nothing to do with whether or not he actually has clothes on.

Then she blinks, and that spacey, otherworld look is gone from her eyes. Her face settles into something like normal as she takes the glass and drains it in one sip.

"Way to save some for me," he jokes.

She smirks. "Such a gentleman."

She hands him the empty cup, which he lets fall on the floor before lying back down and pulling her in towards him. She rests her head on the shelf of his collarbone.

"Thinking about me now?" she jokes.

He shrugs one shoulder, rolling his eyes. "Maybe."

She laughs, a rumble he feels against him.

Her fingers graze his neck, the neatly trimmed and manicured nails brushing against his pulse. Drew holds his breath and pauses, trying not to move an inch, just closing his eyes and feeling the beat against Bianca's slightly damp palm, like she's holding all of him in her hand. She presses her ear to his heart, still drumming wildly, and tries to slow her ragged breathing. She takes a deep breath and sighs against him, and he can feel his own frantic rhythm slowing down to match hers.

"That feels good", he murmurs, sighing into her hair.

Bianca drops her hand, pressing it against his chest, and pushes herself closer against him.

"Don't move," she mutters, closing her eyes. "You're comfy."

Her eyes drift shut, and Drew lets his arms go slack in her curls, his eyes slowly closing.

He hears her whisper, "thank you" into his neck. Drew isn't sure what that means. If she's talking about the sex or just this lying down, or of she's talking about everything else that still hangs in the heavy air between them. But he doesn't ask, and doesn't let her go, just like she doesn't move away.


End file.
